It is my nephew's 2nd birthday tomorrow so we went out shopping for a present for him. He is as boyish as you can get (loves desruction, noise, cars, truck...etc.) so we wanted to find him something fun to play with so he can give his poor big sister a break from "mini-captain bananas." What we found was that kids have such cool stuff now days! Bright fun colorful toys.

We have this great store here in Portland called Hello Portland, and it is a bright colorful store filled with things for kids... even big kids. I'm sure, or at least I hope there are more kids stores out there in other cities, but just in case you can't find one locally... I wanted to share a couple of my favorite colorful things:

When describing colour symbolism, it's easy to try to label or over-generalise. For example, some schools teach a very basic understand of representative colours in the Western and Eastern halves of the world, much like when discussing philosophies, and suddenly someone says, "That's such an Eastern Philosophy."

The project serves as an interactive tour of pleasures for the eye and mind alike as each click results in running the spectrum and understanding. Stimuli abound, the project mostly plays at contrasts and compliments, and even showing how grey has the unique role of becoming its pair's complement. Later in the tour, the viewer is supplied with a more hands-on approach in an assortment of exemplary articles.

Wikipedia says that an afterimage is an optical illusion that occurs after looking away from a direct gaze at an image, and is closely related to the persistence of vision, which is the retention of an image in the retina. One of the most common afterimages is the bright glow that seems to float before one's eyes after staring at a light bulb or a headlight for a few seconds.

If staring long enough at a primary colour, one will find these ghost images remain as the corresponding secondary colours in the eyes if then looking to a white, blank surface.

For example, if staring at the following, inverted image of the American Flag for thirty seconds, and then at a blank white sheet of paper ... well, see for yourself.

See if you can find other examples of commonly used afterimages, or if you can find the corresponding primary or secondary of your favourite colour. You might want to also make an opposite of the dominant colours in your favourite space.

The deep sea is neither conventionally beautiful nor conventionally exciting. The creatures that do live there are scarce and scattered. According to Oceanlink, almost all of these creatures are scavengers and rely on what floats down from the heights of the layers above. They exist under great pressure, or near the amazingly high temperatures (up to 350 degrees celsius) of hydrothermal vents, which exude bubbling water from the very molten centre of the Earth.

When I woke up this morning, not only did I, as I suppose too many people do, try to suggest it was too early to wake, but I found the spot where my shoulder and my head could fall again, and I blinked while staring at the clock. It was then an hour later. I stumbled out of my room to the kitchen, not really walking on the floor, but the walkway of routine, of memory. With no regard to real distance, I just remembered it was sixteen choppy steps on my toes to the cabinet, five more to the shelf with a bowl for cereal, and a half twist for the fridge. I was no longer paying attention to the spaces or objects around me because I had something particular in mind.